Serious Entertaining: A Cold Fried Chicken Picnic

The issue of cold fried chicken can be a divisive one to say the least. More than once it has tested the resolve of my marital vows. See, I'm firmly on the cold fried chicken is awesome camp. Like pizza, it acquires something during an overnight stay on the counter or fridge that fresh-out-of-the-fryer chicken lacks. The extra-chickeny flavor of the breading, which softens to a stuffing-like texture. The dense bite of cold chicken meat, totally different form the slippery meat that comes off in shreds from hot chicken.

Would I ever pick cold chicken over hot fried chicken? Not really. But there's room in the world for both.

My wife disagrees. She's of the mind that unless you eat skin while its hot, you are wasting it. Thus whenever I fry a chicken for us at home, my wife will scavenge every stray crispy scrap, every golden-brown shard of skin from the leftovers, ensuring that any chicken leftover will be gray and pasty looking skinless appendages by the time they've cooled down the next day.

Here's the good news: my wife is gone for the summer, which means I get to eat cold fried chicken to my heart's content. Heck, I think I'll pick up a box of Popeye's on the way home just so I can let it get cold.

If I'm feeling extra spiteful I'll throw a webcam on it and let my wife watch live as her precious skin softens.

Of course, no picnic is complete without sides, so we've put together an entire travel-friendly menu for your next cold fried chicken picnic. Peep the slideshow above for a walkthrough, or just jump straight to the recipes below:

Print:

Filed Under:

About the Author

J. Kenji López-Alt is the Managing Culinary Director of Serious Eats, and author of the James Beard Award-nominated column The Food Lab, where he unravels the science of home cooking. A restaurant-trained chef and former Editor at Cook's Illustrated magazine, he is the author of upcoming The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, to be released on September 21st, 2015 by W. W. Norton.

Previewing your comment:

HTML Hints

Comment Guidelines

Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more in the Comment Policy section of our Terms of Use page.